"Why do the archives of so many great writers end up in Texas?" the New Yorker asked a couple of years ago. The answer was Thomas Staley, who runs the literary archive of the University of Texas at Austin. In his two decades in the job, 74-year-old Staley has bought a hundred-odd literary collections, ranging from Graham Greene's unusually revealing letters to his friend Bernard Diederich, to the Watergate papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. He has deep pockets - Woodward and Bernstein cost Texas a cool $5m - and more than a few opponents, thanks to his determination to snap up the papers of Britain's leading contemporary writers. Poet Andrew Motion, for one, insists there is a "primitive" connection between a literary work and the place in which it was made, and that British culture is diminished when an important archive goes to Texas.

You can hear Staley's side of the story in The Manuscript Hunter (11am, Radio 4). There's also an interview with British novelist Jim Crace, whose papers were recently bought by Staley for a six-figure sum.